BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network (1,133 Books)

BuddhaNet; is the result of a vision to link up with the growing worldwide culture of people committed to the Buddha's teachings and lifestyle, as an on-line cyber sangha. In this way, an ancient tradition and the information superhighway will come together to create an electronic meeting place of shared concern and interests.

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: The golden wind is the poetic expression, locution for autumn in the old Chinese culture. Cleary, actually, has a very interesting, tough translation of this he says, Body exposed in the golden wind. It's very much that sense of vulnerability and ruin about his translation.

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: The koan tradition began in China as an organic response to the problems of trying to understand reality. What happened was people would meditate and go about their business during the day and then in the evening sometimes the teacher would give a talk or take questions, or students would question each other or they would read. Questions would arise and answers would be given. Some answers seemed more interesting than others and gradually these became known as p...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: One device, one object, one word, one phrase. The intent is that you'll have a place to enter. Still this is gouging a wound in healthy flesh that can become a nest or a den. The great function appears without abiding and fixed principles. The intent is that you'll realize that there is something transcendent that colors the sky and covers the earth, yet it cannot be grasped. This way will do; not this way will do, too. This is too diffuse. This way won't do; no...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: Introduction Under the blue sky in the bright sunlight you don't have to point out this and that any more. But the causal conditions of time and seasons still require you to give the medicine in accordance with the disease. Tell me, is it better to let go or is it better to hold on? To test that like this Look!

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: Whoever would uphold the teaching of our school must be brave spirited with the ability to kill someone without blinking an eye. Only such a person can become a Buddha right where they stand. Therefore, such a one's illumination and function are simultaneous. Locking up and opening out are equal. Principle and phenomena are not two and he or she practices both the provisional and the real. Letting go of the primary she sets up the gate of the secondary meaning. ...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: Everybody wants to attain the light, have it shining and radiant and to see the connection with all beings at all times. And in your zazen that does not happen by clinging to the light. Ultimately what happens is that you start letting things go. Even letting things go is doing too much. When you start letting things go, the lake begins to settle and the water clarifies itself. There is nothing you can do to clarify the Tao; it is already clear. And so, it doesn...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: We are all of us camped in the midst of eternity. We are on a journey from camp to camp and we walk through the summer under the sky, under the green redwood trees. The sky and the trees and the building, all the people, the altar, the meditation, the joy and sorrow we feel, all of these, all of these, are for us. All of these are for you. Why don't you applaud?

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: In battle everyone occupies a pivotal position. So it is said that if you turn upwards, even Shakyamuni, Maitreya, Manjusri, Samantabahdra, and all the myriad sages together with all the masters in the world suck in their breaths and swallow their voices. If you turn downwards, worms and maggots and everything that crawls, all sentient beings each and everyone emits great shining light. Each and everyone towers like a wall miles high. If on the other hand, you n...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: A few weeks ago we were here in sesshin and it seems to me that we're still in sesshin. So this is a very favorable time to go deep; to take another step in the Way. A few weeks ago Al Einhorn's ashes were on the altar during sesshin and since then I've been to two more funerals. So I thought I should talk about death today.

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: Buddha nature is like this. It's like a black stone. It's at the center of the universe. Everywhere you turn, there is the center. The tree is that stone. The person is that stone. The bird is that stone. The sky is that stone. Emptiness is that stone. Wherever you turn, even if you try to get away from it, there it is--your Buddha nature

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: If you want to find the Buddha, look at your own toes, look at your hands. Whose hands are these? Whose weariness is this? Whose heat is this? Whose sound is this? Who stretches from one side of the world to the other? If you want to find the Buddha, look at your own face, look at your shoulders, your hips, your legs. If you really look at this, you will find that everything is already here. There is no need to go searching around. Everything is clear and everyt...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: We have now come a long way deep into the woods, deep into the stillness and when it is like this, it is good to have everything simple. When things are simple, then they shine. Our mind does not get in the way of everything that rises up. Gradually all the attitudes and opinions and feelings and thoughts that are customary to us start to fall away. It's very important to just let them go. Some things are worn out and just need to fall away. You can hold onto th...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: When we begin on the road of spiritual work, we're trying to deal with the usual problems of greed, hatred and ignorance. One of the things we discover is that meditation works and things do soften and become more spacious for us. We also discover that after a certain time all the ways in which we're actually meditating are out of greed, hatred and ignorance as well. We're meditating because we want something in some sort of materialistic way, or because we are ...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: The priest Hsiang-yen said, It is as though you were up in a tree, hanging from a branch with your teeth. Your hands and feet can't touch any branch. Someone appears beneath the tree and asked, What is the meaning of Bodhidharma's coming from the West?' If you do not answer, you evade your responsibility. If you do answer, you lose your life. What do you do?

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: Usually, around this time of sesshin we become aware that we have bodies and the bodies start complaining somewhat. I thought I'd talk a little bit about ways of working with the body. It's easy to ignore when you are following a spiritual path, but it doesn't hurt to be a bit sophisticated about the way we do it. So when you have a lot of pain, there are a number of ways to deal with it. One way is to just sort of grit on through, and, you know, that works for ...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: This is Case No. 11 from the Blue Cliff Record called Huang-po's Gobblers of Dregs. The Introduction is like this. The great capacity of Buddhas and ancestors is completely within this person's control. The lifeline of humans and gods is subject to this person's direction. With a casual word or phrase she astounds the crowd and stirs the masses. With one device, one object, she smashes chains and knocks off fetters. Meeting transcendental potential she brings up...

By: John Tarrant, Roshi

BuddhaNet: Buddhist Information and Education Network document.

Excerpt: In the great work that we do what eventually appears is a great fire or light in us that we realize was always there and touches all things with its joy, but we always begin the work in darkness, I think. Buddha, I'm sure, was not the first to observe that there is something very unsatisfactory about life a lot of the time. He made it the first principle of his teaching saying that you cannot escape from suffering. But then he said, But there is an end to suffer...